


Peppermint Twist

by PacificRimbaud



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Candy Canes, Christmas, Christmas Fluff, Erotically Charged Licking, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Seduction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2019-12-05
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:21:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21678157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PacificRimbaud/pseuds/PacificRimbaud
Summary: He should tell her to stop.He really, truly should.Because it’s against the rules.But he can’t.He wants her to keep going.Just like that.
Relationships: Luna Lovegood/Theodore Nott
Comments: 42
Kudos: 278
Collections: Twistmas 2019 - A Dark Remix Xmas Fest





	Peppermint Twist

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [Twistmas2019](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Twistmas2019) collection. 



> **Prompt:** Candy canes

He should tell her to stop.

He should.

Tell her to stop.

He really, truly should.

Just stop.

Because it’s against the rules.

But he can’t.

He wants her to keep going.

Keep going.

Just like that.

Don't stop.

Don't stop.

~*~

She’s been coming into the library every day for three weeks to do research.

Her earrings are frequently distracting, and sometimes the way she looks straight through him makes him feel more than a little bit exposed, but none of that is any part of the problem he has.

She is not, in _any_ way, the problem.

He's the problem.

Him, and the candy canes.

~*~

Theo realized a long time ago that Luna Lovegood is alright. Even in his most sneering fits of superiority during his years at school, he’d thought she was strange, but also undeniably sweet. It's a word he’d had neither the inclination nor the balls to apply to any of the girls in the Slytherin common room, but she, he thought, ought to wear it proudly, like the red tabs and pips of a Muggle Army colonel. She'd been at war, and it hadn't taken from her what was gentle and good.

He sees her from time to time: at Ministry functions, lectures, and parties. He went to one of her talks, a year or two before, on habitat restoration for large felids in Surrey. He finds her quiet, startlingly intelligent, and unfailingly considerate.

Strange, still and always, but that word now merely punctuated one’s thoughts about her: an exclamation point at the end of a rambling clause.

Here, in the Library of the Ministry of Magic, she rarely asks for much of him. She's in on an unpredictable basis, and can stay for as little as an hour or return each day for several weeks. When she's there, she doesn’t often approach him where he sits in his place at the reference librarian's desk, though she could ask for anything at all that she needs, and he’d help her, gladly.

This time, she’s researching something having to do with vampires, ducks, and Finland, he thinks, based on the texts she pores over.

"Hello, Theo,” she says on her first day of research. Her voice and her smile both are soft, and secret. Theo reminds himself not to take it personally.

"Hello,” he answers.

She takes a seat at a table twelve feet from his desk, and begins to work.

He finds himself looking at her from time to time for no real reason.

And early in the first week, he can’t help but notice when he leans around her to shelve a book on reptilian Animagus forms that she smells cool and sweet, like candied violet and a transient, translucent hint of green apple, with the barest hint of warm vanilla. He wonders whether it’s her shampoo.

Her hair still hangs to her waist in twisting blonde ropes like it did when they were at school, and she still has a tendency to tilt her head to the side and penetrate one's soul with her enormous, clear blue eyes.

She makes one feel completely seen.

There are worse ways to feel, thinks Theo.

It isn't awful.

~*~

It's December.

Theo has been tasked with stringing up cedar garlands around the reference desk, and lighting them with a battalion of small candles. There’s an expectation from management that there will be holly, in unspecified locations and quantities, and something about velvet bows that he's not entirely clear about.

He gets the idea to make a perpetual snowfall behind the reference desk that never actually lands on anything, and constellations of tiny, glittering stars above the “Reference” sign hanging over the desk.

He's not overly keen on decoration. He's a bit cluttered in the apartment he keeps instead of living alone in his rambling manor house, but with books and wool throws and teacups rather than baubles and knickknacks. Still, he concedes that the desk looks nice. He’s not opposed to a bit of festive cheer in his part of the library, so long as it’s not overdone, and doesn’t make any noise.

Luna says nothing about any of it, until it’s been up for a week and a half. When she does, it’s to comment on the snow enchantment that isn’t actually cold.

“You should wear a hat if it’s snowing,” she says. She hops up to press her hips into the edge of his desk with her feet off the floor, leans deep into his work space and holds out her tongue. It's pink and wet and round-tipped. After a long moment where none of the flakes actually land (and he wants to tell her that they aren’t really _real_ snowflakes and will fall like false promises, forever without end into nothing, but she is still so _sweet,_ even at- what is he now, 24, and she, 23?- and he can’t bear the idea of trampling that under the hard sole of a fact), she jumps back to the floor, says “Hmm,” and then makes a gesture with her hand at the crown of her head. “A hat. I wouldn’t want you to experience negative consequences from long-term cold exposure. The books would be upset.”

She’s sweet. She's still, after everything, so very sweet.

Theo clears his throat.

He likes her.

How could he not?

She is a quiet and respectful user of his quiet and respectable corner of the big, quiet library. 

~*~

A week before Christmas Eve, she breaks the rules.

She comes in wearing a short robin’s egg blue dress with gathered, puffed sleeves, a high neck, and a little round-tipped collar in pink cotton printed with yellow roses, which she’s paired with the visual shock of a pair of neon orange tights, yellow ten-eyed boots with hot pink laces, and a pair of earrings that appear to be blue and green budgerigars wearing Santa hats.

It’s a Friday, and he’s spending most of his day weeding.

There’s a rancid-smelling 1971 copy of _Bentley’s Guide to the Great Broomsticks of the Modern Age_ , which is obsolete and can be binned, and a 10th edition printing of a text called _The 12,037 Uses of Tansy_ by Elladora Munby, from which the binding has come loose. He places it in a basket to be sent to the bookbinders for repair. A volume of _A Witch’s Guide to Magical Homemaking_ by Mrs. Simon Sewell, printed in 1952, suggests ways that a witch might make her husband easy and comfortable when he arrives home from a long day at work, so he bins that, too. He found an unfamiliar volume jammed behind the short row of speculative texts on time travel, and it is almost unthinkably old, yellowed and brittle. It's called _On Potions and Portents_ by someone called P. S. Martin, and Theo intends to leaf through it before determining where it ought to go.

He hears the distinctive crinkle of waxed paper, and looks up.

Luna is sitting with a great volume open in front of her, with crisp ecru pages and black-inked index notches - Theo believes it’s an encyclopedia of bird lore, a surprisingly large field- and hovering her finger over the page. Her hair has been pulled up into a great jumbled knot on top of her head, and speared through with her wand.

She's holding a candy cane.

Theo’s immediate thought is that it’s pretty. The candy cane. And aren’t they, just a little bit?

With their red and white stripes in parallel swirls like a barber’s pole, one thin, one thick: a bright, glossy toy shepherd’s crook you can eat. If you were to make a list of childhood objects that signified _joy_ , surely this one would find its way to being written down.

And:

There is no food allowed in the library.

It’s so basic to the tenets of librarianship, and to library patronage, that Theo is stunned into inaction.

No food. In the library. Isn’t that so?

He shifts to move from behind his desk. He will walk up to her, place a hand gently on the table opposite her, and quietly, he’ll tell her.

No food.

In the…

She’s unwrapped the candy cane.

Twisted the end of the paper loose, and rolled it back.

And she’s licking it.

That pink, wet, round-tipped tongue of hers is worrying at the still-blunt tip in short little strokes.

Lapping at it.

Tasting it.

Then she pulls it away from her mouth, and takes a look at it, as though _licking_ is work that she takes very seriously.

And then, and _then_ …

She draws her tongue in a long, slow stripe up the entire length, bringing it into a firm point at the end and flicking it over the tip.

She smiles her secret, soft, Luna Lovegood smile, still looking at the page.

Theo swallows hard.

She should stop.

He doesn’t want her to stop.

He stays behind his desk, and pretends he doesn’t see.

~*~

Over the weekend, he goes for a run on Saturday morning, and another one on Saturday night. On Sunday morning, he takes a cup of tea and a book with him into a scalding hot bath. When he closes his eyes for a moment, he sees the soft, pink tip of her tongue, and slips his hand below the water line.

~*~

“I’ve been thinking about it,” says Luna. “A very great deal.”

Theo looks up from the parchment he’s just received from Draco down in the Department of Mysteries.

It’s Monday morning, and Luna is standing next to his desk.

She’s wearing a hand knit sweater in thick stripes of pink, orange, pale blue, and olive green, with a short skirt the color of a holly berry, and thick cable knit tights in the same shade. Her earrings are a pair of pale pink glass ball ornaments, and she’s wearing ankle-high boots in dark green synthetic dragonskin. Her hair is French braided along one side of her head, and it all curls over her left shoulder.

“You’ve...been thinking about it,” repeats Theo.

“I have,” she says, firmly. “And I think I know what you want.”

Theo looks at her blankly.

“Is it that obvious?” he finally says.

She reaches into the depths of her bag, and pulls out a hand knit hat.

It isn’t fluorescent orange, it isn’t three feet long, and it isn’t decorated with all kinds of flowers and stars and rainbow-colored baubles.

It’s a two by two ribbed knit watch cap in very fine wool, in a sensible dark heather grey. It rolls up at the hem, and there is a neat letter T embroidered to it in green.

She holds it out to Theo.

“Did you make this?” he asks, taking it from her.

“Yes,” she says. “It’s hard to look at you under all that snow."

It’s not _real_ , Luna, he wants to say, and the absurdity of saying _that_ to _her_ makes him want to laugh.

"I know that it isn't really cold," she says, "but it makes me _think_ that you are. And I wanted to do something that would keep you warm.”

He suddenly feels very warm indeed.

“Merlin. I don’t know what to say. Thank you,” he says.

His dark hair is perpetually springing from his head in obstinate windswept tangles that refuse to take the instruction of a comb or a brush, so he barely hesitates to pull the cap over his head.

She smiles at him.

Soft, and secret.

Then she gets back to her work.

It’s nearing closing time when she pulls out another one of her sodding candy canes.

He’s working at his desk again, making revisions to the catalog with a quill, and he can’t help but look up when he hears the sound of the waxed paper.

She’s writing as well, taking notes from the pages of an unbound manuscript. Something about unusual encounters with waterfowl.

He means to look away, of course. It’s just a stick of peppermint flavored sugar, for Merlin’s sake. She's not a Pansy or a Daphne, always with an angle to everything they do; she couldn't possibly _mean_ anything by it. Watching her lick it, watching her _enjoy_ it, would be a very weird and wildly inappropriate thing to do.

But then, she swirls.

Her tongue.

Around the tip.

Her tongue is a point, and it’s rolling in steady circles around the head...around the tip...no, the _end_ of the candy cane. Around, and around. Slow, lazy circles.

She closes her mouth, and swallows, then opens it again.

She drops her jaw slightly, and lets her tongue slip out of her mouth, just a bit, loose and relaxed, smooth and pink and wet. Then she slides the end of the stick incrementally into her mouth, bit by bit, until it must be sitting on the back of her tongue.

She pulls it back out again.

Slowly, she pushes it back in, and he can see her tongue pulse against the length of the stick, getting it wet.

Getting it _wet_.

Once it’s at the back of her mouth again, she closes her lips around it, and slowly, she draws it out, until it releases from her lips with a pop.

She swallows.

Then she pushes it back inside.

Without changing her pace, she pushes it in, and draws it almost all the way back out.

Again.

And again.

He can tell from the way her jaw moves that she’s working around it.

Licking.

Stroking.

It moves across her tongue.

In, and out.

She swallows again.

He watches her.

Watches her enjoy it.

She likes it.

He keeps watching.

Three minutes. Five?

Her lips are red, now.

Bright, bright red.

Bright, and red, and wet, and her eyes are on her parchment, and her tongue and lips are working while she slides her mouth over the shaft...over the _stick_ , damn it...up and down, again, and again, and then, she’s moving faster.

Like that, he thinks.

Just like that.

Don’t stop.

Keep going.

 _Just_ like that.

She pulls the stick out with a wet slurp, and swallows.

Her eyes are on…

...him.

She’s looking right at him, with that penetrating gaze.

He realizes that he’s dropped his quill.

His mouth hangs open maybe more than a little bit, and he’s sitting at the edge of his chair.

He hopes to the gods she doesn't ask him for help, because he can’t possibly stand up.

He looks away immediately, picks up his quill, and begins to write again.

He's writing blindly, things he doesn’t see or remember.

He’s thinking about her mouth.

Her red, _red_ mouth.

~*~

On Tuesday and Wednesday, he all but abandons his desk, and spends his time in the safety of the stacks.

~*~

“I’ll be finished tomorrow,” she tells him on Thursday.

She’s wearing a blouse in goldenrod yellow with a row of small turquoise buttons up the front, a skirt in five layers of ombre pinks, and rainbow striped tights. Her earrings are a pair of glittering pale blue snowflakes, and she has on a pair of candy apple red Mary Janes. Her hair is curlier than usual, glossy and glowing in the morning light.

“Oh,” he answers. “You’re nearly done with your research?”

“Yes. I’ve found very satisfactory answers to most of my questions. And lots of ideas to follow up on.”

“That’s excellent,” he replies. “I’m glad the library had what you needed.”

She smiles at him.

“That’s why I came here,” she says. "For the books."

“Of course. Well. I’ll get back to filing, then.”

She turns on a heel and takes her seat, with a stack of six volumes on blood clotting disorders.

They’ll be closing early tomorrow, on Friday, for Christmas Eve. And then she’ll be gone, until the next time. Whenever that will be.

The day drags.

He helps another patron for a full half an hour, locating a handful of research papers on the mating behaviors of the Antipodean Opaleye, and spends an hour meticulously bringing every quill in his drawer to a perfect point.

At 10 a.m. he takes an unnecessary, protracted walk down to the tea cart when he notices that the morning sunlight streaming in through the narrative stained glass windows on the south wall, depicting Merlin and Arthur engaged in Potions work, has struck Luna’s hair in kaleidoscopic shades of yellow, green, red and blue, and makes the glitter-coated snowflake earring in her left ear glint every time she moves her head.

He knows that he’s staring, watching her head shift subtly from side to side as she reads and takes notes, but he can’t bring himself to stop. When she finally lifts her enormous, wide-set blue eyes to him, he grabs his robe, runs out the door, and stands so long in the lobby with his tea, black, with lemon, that he has to use a heating charm on it on his walk back to the library.

He lunches with Draco in the cafeteria.

Halfway through the lunch hour, Theo comes out of his own thoughts and looks down at the table.

“You’ve eaten all my chips,” he says.

“You weren’t having any,” says Draco, licking grease from his thumb.

“But you’ve eaten _all_ of them. Why didn’t you get some of your own?” asks Theo.

Draco looks at him meaningfully.

“Oh, right,” says Theo. “The thing with the…” he gestures broadly at his cardiovascular system, “...arteries.”

“That’s right. The better half knows when I’ve bought myself fried food. Every time. But somehow she doesn’t pick up on it if I’ve eaten someone else’s. She’s not as clever as she thinks, is she?”

Theo leans his chin on his hand and sighs.

Draco wipes his fingers on a napkin, tosses it onto the cafeteria tray, and slings his designer satchel across his body.

He stands, and puts a hand on Theo’s shoulder.

“Have you said anything to her yet?” Draco asks.

Theo looks up.

“Said anything to who?”

Draco gives him one of his half smiles.

“I don’t know. But I look forward to hearing all about her.”

He pats Theo’s shoulder, and goes back down to the Ninth Level.

Theo doesn’t think he’s ever watched a clock move more slowly in his entire life.

He’s not sure what he’s waiting for, other than closing time, but he has the overwhelming sense that he’s not doing something that he ought.

He finishes the catalog update he began at the start of the week, then opens three packages that have arrived from book publishers, and begins to label the books, enter them into the catalog, and tie them into the locator spell system.

He wonders if he can fetch a fifth cup of tea from the tea cart and still manage to get to sleep tonight, when he hears the telltale crinkle of waxed paper.

He does not look up.

The inside of his desk drawer becomes intensely absorbing.

He pulls it all the way out, and removes absolutely everything.

There are four broken quills, two unopened pots of ink, a stick of wand wax, a pad of sticky parchment, half a dozen loose Bertie Bott’s beans that he suspects were left by the fellow with the sweet tooth who held his job three years previously, a pack of 90 unused book labels, what looks like a dried salamander leg, and a deck of playing cards, which is missing two.

He bins almost all of it, and spends a solid thirty minutes using a cleaning charm in the corners of the built in drawer dividers, and then he goes over to the custodial office and asks an elf for a bottle of wood polish.

He applies it with a cotton swab.

Afterward, he washes his hands with extreme care, which eats up eight minutes going from his desk to the kitchenette in the library staff room and back to his desk again.

Finally, he sits down to read one of the newly cataloged books.

It’s about water-based charms.

He decides that it’s imperative to learn how to make a little water spout in his bathtub, and gives the necessary charm his complete attention.

There’s a loud thud from Luna’s table, and he looks up.

She’s closed the massive bird lore tome.

She’s looking at him.

And sucking.

Her head is tilted slightly down, and her lips are wrapped around the candy cane.

She draws it out, slowly, through the tight O of her red lips, and looks at him through her thick, pale eyelashes.

When it’s almost out of her mouth, she hollows out her cheeks, and the suction draws it back in.

She does it again.

And again.

For a moment, she’s looking right at him, with those large, curious eyes.

And then she opens another book, and looks down.

He lets himself watch.

She opens her red lips and licks one unbroken, patient stripe up the shaft.

She tilts her head sideways and pulls it between her lips, nipping at it.

She licks its sides softly with her red, red tongue.

 _In_ , he thinks.

As if on command, she opens her mouth, and glides it across her tongue, then closes her lips around it.

 _Suck_ , he thinks, and she sucks.

It’s deep inside her mouth, and she pulses it there in short strokes, drawing it over and over against the back of her tongue.

Yes, he thinks.

Like that.

Keep going.

A little faster.

Don’t stop.

Just like that.

You’re so sweet.

So sweet.

Be sweet for me,

just for me,

and

keep going.

Please.

Don't stop.

Don't stop.

She takes it into the back of her mouth, and he hears a loud crunch.

He startles, and jumps back in his seat.

She looks up, and pulls the now-blunt half of a candy cane out of her mouth.

She looks up at him with those wide, curious, sweet, innocent eyes.

She smiles.

He’d take the lift down to the Ninth Level and throw himself into the death curtain, only they blocked it off four years ago, and now you need a key card for it.

She looks down, and crunches her candy cane.

She reads her book.

Her mouth is red.

~*~

The moment his apartment door shuts behind him when he arrives home that evening, he leans back against it hard, and tears at his belt buckle.

He closes his eyes.

In the dark, inside his mind, he sees red, red lips.

They open, and say:

_Yes._

Behind his closed eyes, he unfastens ten little turquoise buttons on a goldenrod-colored shirt. 

The red lips say _please_.

And then they say _more_.

Rainbow striped tights roll down soft thighs.

The red mouth says _yes_ , and _I want_ , and then, after a while, when it says _don't stop_ , his hips jerk against his hand.

Behind his closed eyes, he’s holding handfuls of thick, curling, golden hair, and his fingertips press against her scalp.

He pulls her mouth to his.

She tastes sweet, and cool.

Like peppermint.

Light blooms across the darkness behind his eyelids.

Like the sun glancing off a glitter-covered snowflake.

He slides down to sit on the floor, and begins to catch his breath.

When he opens his eyes, he finds that his cat is staring at him from the arm of the sofa.

The cat is large-boned, and thin, and grey, with massive yellow eyes and a permanent look of contempt.

His name is Paul.

“Don’t look at me like that, you judgmental prick,” Theo says to Paul. “If one of us is the pervert here, it’s the one who licks his own back end in the middle of the kitchen rug.”

Paul blinks, slowly.

Paul thinks Theo is full of shit.

And Theo can't argue with that.

~*~

On Friday, he can’t look her in the eye.

It’s Christmas Eve Day.

She pulls the bird lore book and several volumes on vampires and brings them to her table, and lets her curtain of blonde hair fall around her while she reads.

He does everything half-heartedly. Even the perpetual fake snow charm looks scraggly and depressing, and he ends it before 10 o’ clock.

He meets Draco at the tea cart, and buys him a coffee.

“Gods, this stuff is shite,” says Draco.

“Buy it yourself next time, then,” sulks Theo.

Draco sucks another draught of his shite coffee through the opening in the lid.

“She won’t brew me any down in the lab today. And I asked very nicely. She said I should make it myself, so I told her I had people to do that sort of thing for me, and she didn’t think that was very funny. She said if that was the case, I could get other people to do the sort of thing for me that I very much only want her to do.”

He looks at Theo. “No luck, then, I gather?” he asks. “I’m not convinced they’re entirely worth it.”

Theo sips his tea, then pulls in a rush of air over his burned tongue.

“I’m fairly certain this one is,” says Theo. “But I don’t think I’m the right sort.”

The image of Paul sneering at him sanctimoniously as he sat on the floor of his entryway with his trousers undone comes to mind, unbidden.

“I should think she would like to have the chance to weigh in on that,” says Draco. “But what do I know. I’m addicted to this wretched bean juice, and a woman who runs circles around me intellectually, but can’t take a joke.”

“Your jokes are mean,” says Theo.

Draco looks smote.

“Alright. I accept that. And it may have contributed to significant delays in winning the girl in my case. But you,” he pats Theo on the shoulder. “Are not mean. Just ask her out.”

Theo takes in a large mouthful of burning hot tea, and spends the rest of the morning sucking air over his tongue.

The library will close at 5 p.m.

The sun sets just before 4 o’clock, and the library is quiet and empty, lit by the candles in the chandeliers, and the lanterns hanging over the work tables.

The little candles set in the cedar garlands burn softly, and the stars over the Reference sign are bright.

Theo sits at his desk, twirling in his chair.

He recasts the snowflake charm, giving it a bit more welly than he had in the morning. It looks nice.

Then, he casts a charm that gives the air around the desk a pleasant, spiced scent, like cinnamon, clove and orange peel.

He’s made plans to spend Christmas Day with Draco at the Manor, and will send an owl to Azkaban with the obligatory greetings for his father.

He’s leaning back with his hands behind his head, speculating about how much the Christmas dinner at Malfoy Manor will have been influenced by Draco’s girlfriend’s war on atherosclerosis, when he hears the sound of waxed paper.

He presses his eyes shut tightly.

 _Gods_ , he thinks. If I never see another candy cane in my life after this Christmas, it will be too soon.

He brings his hand to his face, and pinches the bridge of his nose.

Oh, _fuck_ it.

He leans back in his chair, tilts his head back, and looks at her over his shoulder.

Merlin help him.

She’s beautiful.

Half of her hair has been done in braids that loop around the crown of her head, while the rest flows down her back in loose curls.

She’s wearing a bright red dress with short sleeves, a surprisingly low neckline, and a massive bow at the shoulder, with mint green tights and a pair of red Muggle high top sneakers.

Her earrings are little high-gloss candy canes, each one with a holly sprig flair.

She’s not eating a candy cane.

There’s one sitting on the table next to the spread of books, its end twisted open, but she’s not eating it.

She flips through one of the books until she lands at the page she’s after, and props it open in front of her while she takes notes on an already crowded parchment.

She’s concentrating, absorbed, and that dreamy look she always has is replaced by an intense focus and interest, and he suddenly understands what a Ravenclaw is. She’s drawing in information, and he can practically see the machinery of her mind sorting through it, categorizing it, picking it up, turning it over, and learning its shape, so that she can decompose it and put it back together into something new.

Creating knowledge where it didn’t exist before.

She picks up the candy cane, and absently places it in her mouth.

She sucks, and licks, but her appetites are elsewhere, with what’s printed on the page, and the ritual with the candy cane is missing something that was there before.

He feels as if he’s waking from a dream he's ashamed to remember.

Theo spends the last fifteen minutes reshelving a handful of books from the wooden cart that lives next to his desk, and cleaning the counters in the staff kitchenette.

The idea of watching her leave is depressing, and when five o’ clock arrives, he feels as though he’s in luck when her books are already cleared away from the work table, and she’s nowhere to be found.

He’s halfway to the door when she rounds a corner, coming from the stacks where he knows the bird lore encyclopedia is shelved.

As she moves closer to him, he notices that she’s wearing eye make-up today, something soft and glittery, and her cheeks are pink.

He pauses, and turns toward her.

She stops.

For a drawn out moment, neither of them speaks.

She runs her fingers along the edge of the long strap of her cotton bag, and rolls one foot to the side.

He swallows, and examines the fingernails on his left hand.

“I apologize, Theo," she finally says. "I didn’t mean to leave so late."

He clears his throat.

“No apologies necessary,” he says. “You’re always welcome here, right up until it’s time to lock the doors.”

“Thank you.”

“Of course. It isn’t as though I have anywhere else to be,” he continues.

Why did he say that?

She tilts her head to one side.

“No?”

“Oh, well, not tonight. I’ll be heading home for a drink, and probably listening to Paul complain about something that doesn't actually negatively impact him in any way.”

She looks surprised, and then as though something’s just clicked.

“Oh! Paul. He’s your…”

“My cat.”

“Oh,” she says. She becomes perplexed again.

“So, you don’t have a...do you just live with him? Paul?”

“Yes. He doesn’t drink, though, that’s just me.”

She smiles.

“That makes sense.”

“Right. Well, happy Christmas, Luna.”

Her mouth is red.

Suddenly, without warning, he’s struck by the image of golden curls spread out across his pillow in the morning sun. 

"Do you want one?" she asks.

He pulls himself unwillingly out of his bed.

“Pardon me?”

There’s something to the way she looks up at him, in the tilt of her head, and the way she pulls at her lower lip with her teeth.

Her mouth is red.

“I’d be happy to give you one,” she says. “I’m quite good at them.”

She’s quite…

His brain puts on its robe and slippers and retires for the evening.

“You're willing to give me one,” he says.

“I’d like to, actually,” she says. “If you’ve been thinking about it.”

He swallows, and lifts his eyebrows at her, as if to say, _You can’t possibly be talking about what I’m thinking about_. _But in case you are, are you?_

She smiles that soft, secret smile of hers, the one that doesn’t belong to him in any way.

"I'm...surprised that you'd want to,” he says. They couldn’t, could they?

“I’d love to,” she says.

“Right here?” he asks. “Right now?” He scans the empty library. “What if someone sees?"

"They could have one, too."

The thought makes it halfway through his mind before it causes a jam.

“Oh. I’m not sure that I…”

“They’re delicious.”

“They’re...oh! Are they?”

“Mm hmm.”

“I haven’t given one to a bloke before. Girls though, of course. I always give them to girls. And they’re...yes, well, they're lovely. I certainly enjoy them.”

“I’ll give them to anyone.”

“Oh,” he says. “That’s a thing that you’ve just said, isn’t it.”

He’s warm. So very warm. The room feels stifling.

“I’m not sure that...” he says. “I mean, I’m going to be very honest, if it’s just something you'll do for _anyone,_ that’s not really what I...”

He stops talking.

She’s reached into her bag, and is holding out a thin, red and white, waxed paper wrapped candy cane.

“Happy Christmas, Theo.”

He looks at the hooked candy like she’s presenting him with a live, enraged viper.

He replays their conversation in his head.

_Do you want one._

_I’d be happy to give you one._

_I’m quite good at them._

And everything falls neatly into place.

“You make them yourself, then?” he asks.

“Yes. Candy making is tricky, but I've practiced a great deal, and they’re so nice to give to people at Christmas."

She smiles.

Theo wonders if he hurries, whether he could get Draco to track down a key card to the death curtain for him.

His hand feels like lead as he lifts it to take the candy cane from her.

He slips it in his pocket.

24 years has been a good, long run. Perhaps it was inevitable that it be brought to a sudden halt by the tragic misreading of a library patron innocently enjoying a holiday treat.

“I had hoped they’d bring to mind sex, of course,” she says.

Theo blinks.

“You hoped they’d do what?”

“Make you think about sex,” she repeats. “I did some research, and _Witch Weekly_ has published numerous articles on how to get the wizard you fancy to notice you. They repeatedly advise drawing attention to one’s mouth.”

Theo feels an odd buzzing sensation in the abandoned space between his ears.

“Your mouth,” he says. He’s beginning to feel like a parrot sitting down for its speech lessons.

“Yes. They suggested food, especially anything that could be licked, sucked, or drawn suggestively into the mouth.”

"Did they?"

"Yes. They also suggested smiling a lot, asking you for help, and wearing make-up. I did the last one. I like decorating myself sometimes."

She closes her eyes slowly, and the glitter covering her eyelids gleams in the candlelight.

Theo needs his brain to come back, because there's something happening, right now, that is important and confusing.

"It suggested asking _me_ for help," he repeats.

"Yes. But talking to you makes me feel jittery, and I'm very capable of navigating the library independently."

He notices, now, that the pink flush to her cheeks isn't part of the make-up, and she's twisting the strap of her bag around and around in her right hand.

"In any case, none of those strategies have worked," she says.

They haven't…

Oh, but they have.

"The candy canes did make me think about sex," says Theo quickly.

Her face brightens.

"Oh!"

"They did draw attention to your mouth," he says.

Her mouth is red.

Her mouth is red, and she wants him to think about sex.

With her.

"Are you interested in having sex?" she asks.

Theo wishes the tea cart was still open so he could run down, get himself a boiling hot cup of tea, black, with lemon, run back to the library, and suck up a large mouthful so he could spit it out in surprise.

"With you?" he asks.

"Yes, with me."

"Yes," he confirms. "I am very, _very_ interested in having sex with you."

"That's wonderful!" she says, and her smile is brighter than all the candles on the cedar garlands wrapped around the Reference desk.

"I'm not sure when you'd like to start, but I can tell you all of the things that I like, and don't like, beforehand, and you can tell me yours, so we don't waste time or make one another unhappy," she says. "I've found it difficult to get men to believe that I like it a little…"

A garden of possibilities blooms in Theo's mind.

He’s going to take Luna Lovegood home with him tonight, and boy, is that asshole Paul going to be surprised.

"Luna?" Theo interrupts her.

She stops talking, and blushes even harder.

"Yes?"

"What you are saying is extremely important, and I swear that I will be a faithful and devoted student of everything that pleases you, in bed and out of it, tonight and for however long you'd like me to be, but I'd very much like to kiss you right now. May I? Please?"

There's a hint of urgency that he can't keep out of his voice.

She smiles at him with her red, red mouth.

He steps into her, and wraps his hands in her soft, curling blonde hair, and presses his fingers against her to bring her close.

She's sweet.

She tastes so sweet.

Like peppermint.


End file.
